Every year, NewFronts presenters tell the same story: We’re sexier than linear TV—give us your money. That message hasn’t changed much.

“It does feel a bit like Groundhog Day,” said Bryan Master, SVP and head of enterprise partnerships at Omnicom, who said every platform likes to brag that “this is the year [they’ll] steal all the linear dollars and crack the code.”

This year, though, the data is finally on streamers’ side: Streaming surpassed linear television in terms of weekly reach among 18–49 year-olds in 2022, according to Nielsen data that Roku shared with Marketing Brew. While buyers will still spend more on linear television than on streaming platforms this year, they know which way the wind is blowing.

Some stats:

• Connected-TV spending is expected to grow 39% this year to reach $21.2 billion, more than double the 2020 level, according to the IAB. Three out of four buyers surveyed by the IAB said CTV was a “must buy” in their budgets.
• During NewFronts presentations last week, Roku touted 61.3 million active accounts, Samsung said it had access to insights from more than 45 million smart TVs in the US, Tubi shared it had 51 million active users, Peacock said it had 28 million monthly active users, and Amazon said that Judge Judy Sheindlin’s new show on Freevee, Judy Justice, totaled 40 million viewer hours. So, yeah, it’s big.

“Consumption is moving to streaming,” Brad Stockton, VP, US national video innovation at Dentsu, told Marketing Brew. “Our dollars and impressions need to follow that consumption behavior.”

One step forward, two steps back

While the scale is getting there, measurement and transparency are still lagging, media buyers told Marketing Brew. In conversations ahead of this year’s NewFronts, four media buyers raised concerns about measurement.

That shouldn’t be surprising, as buying streaming inventory can be as opaque as any other platform, especially amid Nielsen’s ongoing measurement snafus.

“In the last three or four months, I don’t feel like anybody has set aside anything that makes me feel like there’s a solid direction as it pertains to [streaming] measurement,” said Ira Maher, VP of strategy at integrated agency The Basement.

Click here to read more about their concerns—and how platforms are trying to alleviate them.—RB

A few years ago, podcast ad revenue was projected to cross the $1 billion mark in the US by 2021. That prediction came true, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

In its sixth annual US Podcast Advertising Revenue study released yesterday, the org said revenue jumped by 72% year over year to reach $1.4 billion last year. It’s forecasted to surpass $2 billion by the end of this year and more than $4 billion by 2024.

Podcast ads ‍♀️online ads: Podcast ad revenue grew about twice as much as total internet ad revenue in 2021, per the report.

• Big spender: Financial services brands and DTC retailers, as well as arts, entertainment, and media companies, led the pack in terms of podcast ad spending in 2021.
• Join the party: Brands from a broader array of industries are starting to invest in podcast ads: Last year, nearly a third of revenue came from brands relegated to the “other” category, which includes industries like energy, tech, law, and sports. In 2019, this segment represented 8% of revenue.

In terms of genre, news, comedy, and society and culture podcasts, in that order, drew the largest share of ad spending last year. The sports category made a comeback after the peak of the pandemic in 2020, roughly doubling its share of ad revenue year over year in 2021.

The rise of DAI and pre-rolls: In 2019, the split between dynamically inserted and baked-in ads was fairly even (48% to 52%). But in 2021, 84% of revenue came from DAI, and 16% from baked-in ads.

• Mid-roll ads are still most popular, but the share of ad revenue attributed to pre-rolls increased from 22% in 2020 to 32% in 2021.
• Host-read ads continue to account for the majority share of revenue by ad type, although their share is down from 66% in 2019 to 55% in 2021.

Lag: Programmatic advertising still isn’t very popular in podcasting. It fluctuated slightly from 2.2% of total ad revenue in 2020 to 1.7% in 2021.—AM

Each Tuesday, we spotlight Marketing Brew’s readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Richard Donahue is CMO at Ibotta, a free cash-back rewards and payments app.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? We’re just trying to grab people’s attention for a second so we can explain to them why we think they would like using our product.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I’ll always remember this Supercuts ad from about 10 years ago where there’s a guy who suddenly leaves what he is doing when he realizes it’s time for a haircut. I felt like they were speaking directly to me (and how I view haircuts).

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? These actually go hand in hand. I’m least optimistic about engaging consumers with our message in media where there are big audiences, but we are simply an interruption. I’m very optimistic about the opportunities to engage our audiences in new channels or with valuable content that adds to what they’re already consuming.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Our “Free Thanksgiving Dinner” campaign was proof that when a smart team is faced with a unique set of circumstances and given the freedom to tackle that challenge without restrictions, they can create something incredible. We fed over 5 million people in a year when the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on school, employment, and just about every facet of our daily lives. The ultimate win-win for us [was that] we grew our business while doing good for the community.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Old school: Familiarize yourself with these new commercial formats and tools from NBCUniversal, including retro ads designed to match the time period of certain TV shows.

Better late than never: Instagram users will soon be able to display NFTs, with “similar functionality” coming to Facebook soon.

Go time: TikTok shares the basics of marketing mobile games.

Find your next great marketer by sharing your openings with our 250K+ industry leading marketers on the  Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Senior Marketing Manager, NYC at José Andrés ThinkFoodGroup
• Director, Growth Marketing at Rho
• Marketing Project Manager at Iron Horse

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Clara wants to even the playing field between brands and creators
• Here’s how companies are (and aren’t) responding to Roe v. Wade
• This year’s upfront season is a testing bonanza

Eighty-five percent of households in the US have some sort of video subscription, per Kantar, but many of those households double, triple, or even quadruple up. What’s the average number of video subscriptions per household as of this year?

1. 3.2
2. 4.7
3. 2.4
4. 5.3

Keep scrolling for the answer.